Quarry Hymns
by Sincerely Savannah
Summary: "It was the first time Jonas had noticed the two people standing mere feet away from him and Gabe." I wrote this for my English class, so just go ahead and tell me what you think.


**Author's Note: Hi everyone, I wrote this for my English class because we had to write what we thought would be the twenty-fourth chapter of "The Giver," so I decided to post it up on FanFiction. **

**And anyone else who might be reading this and is also following my other story "Dreaming Out Loud," I'm so sorry for my absence but the next chapter **_**will**_** be coming in the next few weeks. I promise. Thank you so much for the support!**

**Anyway, all characters and the first few lines belong to Lois Lowry, and the lyrics belong to Land of Talk. Thanks for reading and enjoy!**

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**_Quarry Hymns_**

_Leaving on the hottest day_  
_to sink this quarry under._  
_With the motor on the private ring,_  
_Lie and quell your kingdom._  
_Wrote it on the stolen heart_  
_I couldn't keep the words in you,_  
_you had to learn about the hardest things_  
_A softer side I'll leave you._  
_And on days like these,_  
_I could take apart my window._  
_So let down, I was so let down._

_How deep is this hole, I'm filling in?_

_Sing our lights out,_  
_Down the quarry down_.~ Land of Talk

For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps it was only an echo.

Jonas came to a sudden stop on the vibrant red sled, Gabriel still tucked into his chest, hoping to receive body heat. They had reached the bottom of the hill, and through the chilled blurry wind, Jonas could make out the specks of flickering light coming from glass windows that were paneled into wooden houses, with what looked like pine tree branches wrapped into a ring on the front doors.

Snow was still falling as Jonas stood up from the sled, cradling Gabriel, and supporting his weight on one leg, while limping with the other. He felt the crunch of fresh, moist snow beneath his feet, relishing at the feeling. Jonas felt Gabriel shift inside of the tunic, and he saw the small child give a small, weak gesture with his hand, motioning for Jonas to look ahead of them. It was the first time Jonas had noticed the two people standing mere feet away from him and Gabe.

It was a man and a woman, coming to a halt before them. Content and true happiness painted their facial features, with a certain look in their eyes that made it seem as though they were truthfully awaiting the arrival of Jonas and Gabriel—just like the rumors Jonas had always heard about Elsewhere; there was always someone waiting to welcome the ones who had been released. The man had unruly, dark ginger hair that fell into his eyes, which were also dark, and would've looked like anyone else's eyes back in the community, except they had a liveliness to them that could easily set them apart. And the woman, however, had an entire air of difference that set her apart; her hair was falling in mahogany waves down her back as her aqua green eyes lit up her face—eyes that reminded Jonas of the Giver.

"Jonas," she said as though she had known him his whole life, and saying his name was the most natural thing to her. "We've been expecting you to come."

Although happiness had elated him only moments ago while going downhill, cautiousness had filled him now—even if something in him was saying to trust these strangers.

Jonas wanted to ask who they were; although he didn't want to seem rude, but then he remembered that he was the Receiver—he was allowed to ask questions. And even if that wasn't going to seem ideal with the two people, he was no longer in the community.

"Who are you?" he asked, weariness filling his voice. He kept his eyes steady on the woman's, aqua meeting aqua.

"Rosemary, the assigned mother of your new family unit," she answered smoothly, before letting an amused grin spread across her face at the stricken look that now crossed Jonas's at the mention of "assigned mothers" and "family units." She let out a laugh, "I'm just kidding, Jonas. You're not in the community anymore, here there's no such thing as assigned parents."

Jonas felt his face relax, and turned his questioning eyes from Rosemary to the man, "And who would you be?" he asked, his voice still careful.

"Caleb," the man answered easily, shifting his gaze from Jonas to Gabriel taking in their pale, seemingly lifeless forms. "Perhaps we should get you inside, to warmth; you look downright freezing."

"The snow isn't too bad," Jonas admitted with a shrug; and it was true. The cold wasn't so bothersome anymore. It was as if any trace of shivers had left him when the sled took him downhill.

"Well either way we should get you inside," Rosemary said, glancing around at the snow still falling. "I never had much preference toward the cold." Looking back at Jonas, Rosemary reached for his hand, and put her other arm around his shoulder while Caleb reached for Gabriel. Jonas had no problem handing Gabe over to Caleb, or being taken in to a sheltered home. He couldn't find any reason to have a problem with any of it.

Once they had reached the wooden house, Jonas took note that the front door was painted a faded sky blue, and the pine tree ring hanging on the front of it had a scent to it that was unimaginable, and could only be something that was a part of nature—something he would never have been able to experience in the community. Rosemary led him through the front door, and an air of warm atmosphere rushed towards Jonas as soon as he stepped through the threshold. There was a seven-foot pine tree, with brightly colored wrapped packages surrounding the floor beneath it, standing next to a far off wall of the room he just entered, the scent of it clinging to the air, being all a person could smell. Hanging above the fireplace were what looked like colored socks with patches stitched on to them, making them each a unique individual. Sitting against a wall, across from the tree, was a tan colored sofa—as Jonas had learned to call it—with a patched quilt hanging over the headrests, and a wooden rocking chair next to it. All about the room there were little sparks of fire held in small decorative cups that erupted even more of the pine scent.

Jonas had recognized this place. He had seen it before, he had even heard Rosemary's and Caleb's names before—he just couldn't recall why they were so familiar. Nor could he recall why he should remember.

All that mattered was that he had gotten out of the community. He had done what the Giver and he planned, even if it was sooner than they had planned.

"I'm sorry, but I still don't quite understand. Where am I?" Jonas asked once he was nestled on the tan sofa, with the quilt wrapped around his shoulders. Gabriel had also been wrapped in a clean, warm blanket, and he was sleeping soundly in Caleb's arms.

"Well . . . you're not in the community anymore, but you're not exactly in Elsewhere either. You're in a place like Elsewhere," Rosemary explained, sitting on the charred wooden table in front of me. "You see, the community is ordered, organized, and everything is already set up the day before, every life is planned before it's even begun. Elsewhere is the exact opposite of that. It can be messy, chaotic, full of wrong and right choices, freedom and poverty, riches and hunger. Elsewhere is everything a person could want, but then it's also everything a person would never want. It's full of concepts that are nearly implausible for a person to understand, and emotions that can tear a person apart but also put them back together. It is _nothing_ like the community. Elsewhere has love."

Jonas took all of this in and remembered how no one in the community had the true experience of love. He remembered how his Mother and Father had called it an obsolete term that held no precision in language, and therefore held no meaning to them. Although Jonas had felt it; he knew what it was.

"And that's what here is like," Caleb continued, "everything that Elsewhere is, is what this place is. It's perfect in a damaged, imperfect way."

"You've learned about places like this. You've _seen_ places like this. You received them in glimpses of the past; you of all people would know," Rosemary finished for them.

Jonas had understood what they were saying. Although this place wasn't Elsewhere, it wasn't where he had come from. It wasn't the place of assigned children and parents, and chosen assignments. There were no age separations', no taking away childhoods, no House of Old, no strict rules to follow or awkward apologies. There were _no_ releases.

It was a perfect sanctuary that offered everything the community hid from its residents; everything painful, and everything joyful. All of the advantages and disadvantages the came with choices were given. It was just what Jonas had yearned for.

Jonas took another look around the room; never had he felt more at . . . home, then he had with these two strangers. But it all felt so right. He looked over at the rocking chair and the something clicked in his mind.

Suddenly he remembered wishing that he could have a real family, one with parents who truly loved him, a little sister to whom he actually shared blood with, and grandparents—he specifically remembered wanting the Giver to be his Grandfather. How long ago all of this felt.

"You're name is Rosemary," he stated more than asked. The Giver's voice replayed in his mind, about the story of a Release—a painful, sorrowful story about how the Giver, himself, lost his own daughter to pain that was unknown to anyone else in the community.

"And you, you're name is Caleb," murmurs of chants filled his ears as if from a distant memory, the chants beginning loud and strong but turning quieter and softer each time the name was spoken.

"You were the Giver's daughter," Jonas said to Rosemary, finally piecing the familiarity of her light aqua green eyes. Then turning to Caleb, "And you were the one who was lost to the River."

One look at their faces stated that he was right, and Jonas didn't know how to feel.

"We are," Rosemary stated in a calm voice. "But that's okay, because we're where we're supposed to be, just like everyone else here. We, like you, in our own ways, escaped the community, too.

"And now that you have, and you also have nowhere to sleep or stay, or even be sheltered from the cold," Rosemary took one glance at Caleb to see him nod before she went on, "we're offering to take you in. Not forcing you, but it's your own choice, Jonas."

Jonas looked at the both of them and saw the expressions they were giving him. They were ones of patience but also a little bit of pleading that was well hidden, but there was something else too. Hopefulness, maybe—Jonas had never seen it, except in memories, to know what it looked like in real life, but he was pretty sure that was it. Maybe even a little love too, who knew?

There was just one question, "Gabriel can stay too, right?"

A relieved laugh escaped from both Rosemary's and Caleb's mouths and they took Jonas into a tight embrace—something Jonas had never experienced before.

He realized that this is what a _real_ family must feel like. Warm, hopeful, together, love. Everything Jonas ever wanted, and everything he needed.

There was then a sharp, frosty pain that reached his skin again, and he was pulled out of the embrace of Rosemary and Caleb, out of the warm wooden house, away from the pine scent, out

of the haven he found, back through the fresh, moist snow, and onto the ground of the hill again, where he never left.

Gabriel was still cuddled into Jonas's tunic, which was now hardened by ice. Jonas realized with a throbbing pain in his chest that he never got up when he first fell. That he never made it downhill to wooden houses, and he never met Rosemary or Caleb in a place that was like Elsewhere but wasn't.

It was all just a memory that he had toyed with in feeble attempts to find warmth, or take solace in a time that never was for him. But Jonas realized that that time could still be, maybe that's what was waiting for him; not Elsewhere necessarily, but a place like Elsewhere. A place away from the cold. A permanent haven.

Jonas noticed with a fearful shudder that he could no longer feel Gabe move. That the small intakes of breath he gave just five minutes ago were no longer happening.

Maybe in someone else's eyes, Jonas had failed to give Gabriel and himself another chance at actually having a life, but Jonas knew that Gabe had died living a happy memory. And that was all Jonas could hope for, for now.

Jonas closed his eyes again, thinking of a warm house, with family occupying it, and the sounds of singing voices filling the air. His last shuddered breath could have been an echo.

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**Thanks again for reading, I'd really appreciate any feedback, so you can go right ahead and hit the review button. Reviews . . . now they're an addiction of mine ;-)**

**Sincerely, Savannah**


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